See 'The Interior' through the eyes of someone who's been there

Lisa See was on the road promoting her new book, "The Interior," when she
stopped in Sacramento last weekend. She was trying to have lunch with some
old friends when she had to leave the restaurant to conduct a cell-phone
interview from the parking lot. She called me in Davis exactly on time. Hey,
Lisa, you could have finished your lunch! I would have waited.

She has been making a name for herself writing mystery novels set in modern
China. Her first novel was "Flower Net" ( HarperCollins, 1997, $24) followed
by her most recent "The Interior" (HarperCollins, 1999, $25).

But her first book was a nonfiction memoir, "On Gold Mountain," focusing
on her great-grandfather, Fong See, a dirt-poor Chinese peasant who came to
America and first settled in Sacramento. Fong See did very well in America.
He had four wives, was the first Chinese to own an automobile, and lived to
be 100. He made his fortune in curios and antiques and moved down to
Chinatown in Los Angeles where he settled, making frequent trips back to
China. In 1982 the antique store moved to Pasadena where it remains today
selling and renting out Chinese furniture for movie sets.

Through the years, the See family married non-Chinese. Lisa See is only
one-eighth Chinese. She is the daughter of writer and reviewer Carolyn See,
to whom she dedicates "The Interior."

Lisa graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in the late
1970s. "My mother was teaching there and the tuition was free," she said.
She was convinced that she never wanted to marry, have children or write.
She wanted to travel. Since then, she married a lawyer who specializes in
international business law, had two sons and published three books. She
travels extensively and also worked for 13 years as the West Coast
correspondent for Publisher's Weekly.

"The Interior" is not a flawless book, especially in terms of its plot,
which is unnecessarily confusing. But the book is compelling for the look
it provides into China.

One in six people on the planet is a Chinese peasant, she says. But that
life is fast changing as international companies set up factories in the
boondocks and hire young women from the local villages.

(Two novels that similarly look at the lives of women who work in factories
come to mind: "Unravelling" by Elizabeth Graver describes a young American
woman in 19th century New England who leaves her village to work in a
factory and Gail Tsukiyama's "Women of the Silk" focuses on a silk factory
in China.)

See tries to visit China once or twice a year to do research for her books.
"I understand quite a bit of Cantonese and have been studying Mandarin with
my son," she said. "I can get around in China. In fact, I feel very
comfortable there after growing up in LA's Chinatown."

She raised her voice to compete with the traffic.

"I was just in South Hadley, Mass., on this book tour and driving through
that area was very unfamiliar and strange...like the Amityville Horror. Yet I
can travel anywhere in China and I don't get the creeps."

She finds that fiction is a good writing vehicle, too, because as her plots
unfold she can take the time to write about history, politics and
the economy.

"I think some of the nicest compliments I've gotten about this book are from
people who read it and then realize that the things they wear and buy are
from China and are made under some of the poor working conditions that I
describe," she said.

But what appears to Americans to be an outrage is nothing of the sort in China.

"The women making $24 a month in those factories are changing the face of
China," said See. "They are making enough money to open up small stores in
their home villages. These women are working at a free market economy and
are providing an economic value they never had before."
She says the year 1997 was an important year in China because it marked a
growth in the birth rate of Chinese girls, an event that would not have
occurred unless females were seen as providing an economic value.

"The government would like a free market economy with no freedom," is the
way See explains the changes in China. Everyone has an opinion on what the
future of China looks like, but no one knows.

"I just read 168 non-fiction books about the Pacific Rim," said See, who was
a judge for a book award. "They were almost all very difficult to read.
Valuable, yes, but hard to get through. They were written in the language of
urban planners or political scientists or sociologists.

"I am trying to describe how life has changed in China and almost no one is
writing about it today in a, I almost hate to use this word, popular way."

Her next book is "Dragon Bones," which will be about the building of the
still-uncompleted Three Gorges Dam in China.

"More than 2,000 archaelogical sites will be lost forever when that
happens," she said. Stay tuned....

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